Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Carbonera; Private Sunday lunch at Villa Tiepolo
Passi. Near Treviso, just north of Venice is the VillaTiepolo Passi whose nucleus dates from the beginning of the 16th century.
In the 19th century the villa became property of the Conti Passi de Preposulo
who continue to live in this historic residence. The villa remains a place of
rare beauty and today functions as the headquarters of an agricultural estate,
an important destination for cultural tourism, as well as the setting for
exclusive events. With its architecture and art, it allows the visitor to
experience the hospitality of another era, the authentic flavors of a cuisine
based on age-old family recipes, and the magical atmosphere of its buildings
and gardens. Guided tours are held each Sunday at 11 am at the end of which
there is a tasting of jams and preserves produced on the agricultural estate
of Villa Passi. “Our goal is to
explain the historical situation in Venice from the 16th century onwards and
how it led to the construction of thousands of Venetian Villas. Additionally,
here at the villa, we demonstrate how the “Civiltà di Villa”, the unique way of
life in Venetian villas, still exists in our customs, work, food, and
pastimes…” Count Alberto Passi di Preposulo, who is also the president of the Ville Venete association, explains.

Conte Alberto and Contessa Barbara Passi di Preposulo

Sunday lunch at Villa
Tiepolo Passi. Products for sale produced
on the estate include preserves and jams made with quince which are the specialty of
Villa Tiepolo Passi. The quinces used in the various products come from the brolo
(ancient vegetable garden of Ville Venete) where they are grown using
completely natural methods.

Sunday lunch at Villa
Tiepolo Passi. Besides the quince cotognata, preserves,
candied fruits; piquant, sweets and Mostarda Veneta are prepared using an
ancient Venetian process which dates back to 1300s.

Sunday lunch at Villa
Tiepolo Passi – aperititvo # 1. Before lunch the Villa Tiepolo Passi Prosecco
was served in the carriage house. The
Prosecco grapes are grown on the vineyard of the estate, which stretches beyond
the wrought iron gates, which separate the informal rear courtyard and the
countryside.

Sunday lunch at Villa
Tiepolo Passi – aperititvo # 2. Elegant starched white uniforms are handed down
through the decades. The epaulettes boast
the family colors.

Sunday lunch at Villa
Tiepolo Passi – aperititvo # 3. As if on
the set of a period movie, the maid is also, comme il faut, smart in her frilly
starched white apron and gloves.

Sunday lunch at Villa
Tiepolo Passi. The table was
set for twenty-five, with an ivy printed green and white tablecloth, in the magnificently
restored stables with a vaulted ceiling adjacent to the coach house. Built in
1600, the buildings continue to reflect the refined efficiency of an era in
which beauty and function went hand in hand.

Sunday lunch at Villa
Tiepolo Passi.An autumn composition of Hydrangeas
from the garden adorn the stables.

Sunday lunch at Villa
Tiepolo Passi – first course.Contessa
Barbara always favors local recipes, some of which have been handed down
through the centuries. The first course included: Split Pea Soup with croutons,
a pumpkin and rice pie and a broccoli tart.

Sunday lunch at Villa Tiepolo Passi – second
course.Radicchio di Treviso, which is a typical lettuce from the region and
resembles Belgian endive sits next to Baccala alla Vincentina a native dish
from Vicenza made from dried
unsalted cod and served with white, soft steaming polenta. On another table, spare ribs, mushrooms,
cabbage and polenta were offered.

Sunday lunch at Villa Tiepolo Passi – cheeses and
jams.The Villa Tiepolo Passi also
produces jams, preserves, mustards, and candied fruit grown in the brolo, the
villa's vegetable garden, which are delicious eaten with cheese. The centuries-old ortus conclusus, the walled
in orchard has been enriched with the introduction of over six hundred organic
varieties, including apricot, cherry, prune, plum, pear, apple, and quince
trees. The variety of trees ensures a constant supply of fruit from May to
October for the villa’s kitchens.

Monday, November 21, 2011

A cocktail party was held at Palazzo Fortuny for the
completion of the restoration of Mariano Fortuny’s Teatro delle Feste and
Dipinti Dell’Atelier and the cry for help for the restoration of the Bayreuth
Theatre and the Theatre Drawings Album. “THANK YOU”said Franca Coin president of the Venice Foundation “When you do
something for Venice it bounces back at an international level.” The thanks was directed to all the micro
patrons who bought virtual seats to help restore the Teatro delle Feste to its
full splendor.

The story: In 1912,
Mariano Fortuny, Gabriele D’Annunzio and Lucien Hesse designed the Teatro delle
Feste, which was to be constructed at Esplanade des Invalides in Paris. Mariano
himself built the model, based on their design, with his prodigious hands,
inside the studio of the present-day Fortuny Museum where it is now exhibited
in all its former glory.

The virtual seats: The restoration of the model of the Teatro delle Feste was financed
through the booking of virtual seats.

The restoration team. In less than one year, Stefano
Provinciali directed his team of restorers, Laura Folin, Gea Storace together
with Francesco Rado who restored the electrical parts. They will now be restoring the Bayreuth
Theatre, which has to be ready for Wagner’s bicentennial in 2013 to commemorate
the great German composer’s connections to Venice and the city of his death.

The Bayreuth Theatre # 1. Since 1891 Mariano Fortuny was completely captivated
by the allure of the staging of Wagner’s theatre, however many years passed
before he concretely measured himself against the theatre experimenting at
length with both lighting and technology and the preparation of scenographic
sketches. It was in fact starting with
the realization of scenographies linked to the works of Wagner that this model
was born in 1903. Made of wood and metal
and now kept in the atelier, it is a reconstruction of the layout and the
risers of the setting of the German Bayreuth Theatre. In addition, certain reduced scale lighting
applications like the cupola or dome and indirect and diffused lighting
techniques are visible. This maquette is
an intricate and complex system made up of small cables, electrical power
transformers and light bulbs; of wings and scenes depicted on cardboard; of the
cupola, an important stagecraft element of Fortuny’s reformist project. These are all elements, which are in very
poor state of preservation and must absolutely be restored. The objective is that of being able to once
again admire the captivating luminous effects projected onto the setting of
this impressive theatre model, which was meticulously created by Mariano
Fortuny’s skilled hands. The dimensions
of the model are: height 240cm, width 210cm and depth 170cm.

The Bayreuth Theatre # 2. In a rare autobiographical recollection,
Fortuny affirms: “All that I saw and heard kindled in me a desire to achieve
new forms and new aspects that would enhance the general effects of the
theatre: I still remember certain
details of The Rhine Gold scene that were dissatisfying to my youthful
imagination. The effect of the river in
the distance was lacking in the effectiveness because of a bad light trick.”

Note: The scene above is for The Rhine Gold
production.

HELP!!! – The Bayreuth Theatre # 3. You can see for yourself the sorry state of
the Bayreuth Theatre, which stands in one of the rooms of the piano nobile of
Palazzo Fortuny crying for help. It desperately
needs restoring. Donations for the restoration of the model are inspired by
certain Wagnerian works that Mariano Fortuny depicted in paintings and
etchings: the Flower Maidens(E 200 $ 280) running after each other and playing
in Parsifal: Wotan(E 100 $140), the King of the Gods found in the tetralogy
The Ring of the Nibelung; Sieglinde(E 50 $ 70), Sigmund’s sister in The
Valkyrie and finally Mime(E 25 $ 35), a character present both in The Rhine
Gold and Siegfried. The names of the contributors, in the manner, which they
themselves indicate, shall be included in the list of supporters of the
restoration of the Bayreuth Theatre model. For more information contact The Venice Foundation.

Greetings. The mayor of Venice, Giorgio Orsoni,
the director of the Fortuny Museum, architetto Daniela Ferretti, the chairman
of The Venice International Foundation, Franca Coin and the president of the
Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Walter Hartsarich greeted guests at the
cocktail party held at Palazzo Fortuny.
“Dear Friends,” Franca Coin writes in the Venice Foundation newsletter “
in 2013 we shall celebrate the bicentennial of the birth of Richard Wagner. There are many connections between the great
German composer and Venice, a city that he visited six times. During his first visit, in 1858, he worked on
the composition of Tristan and Isolde, while he spent his final one, in 1882,
at Palazzo Vendramin Calegi. It was here
that he spent the last six months of his life.
Yet there is another link which for us is very significant: even Mariano
Fortuny - a man to whom the Venice Foundation has been dedicating the Fortuny
MissionProject since 2010 for the restoration of great works - had since his youth
been so fond of Wagner’s works that he created a model of the Bayreuth Theatre,
so dear to Wagner, upon which to apply his brilliant technological
innovations. This model, which is kept
at the atelier of Fortuny Palace Museum, was created by Mariano and now needs
your generous contribution in order to be restored. We must start right away because the
restoration will be long, difficult and meticulous. We would like to finish in time to
contemporaneously celebrate the skill of Wagner and the genius of Fortuny.”

Theatre Drawings Album. Fortuny expert Claudio Franzini explains the Theatre Drawings Album and
points out the sorry state it is in.

HELP!!! Also on the Fortuny Mission Project agenda is the
restoring of the Theatre Drawings Album, an extraordinary and unique
collection of drawings relating to studies and the scenic and lighting applications,
which Fortuny designed in
support of his complex and structured theatrical reform at the beginning of the
twentieth century. Worthy of note in this album are various drawings and
sketches dating back to 1898 of scenographies of Wagnerian operas along with several architectural reliefs of the Bayreuth Theatre, but above all it is
the ﬁrst drawings of 1902, done in Paris, of the structure of the scenographic
device commonly known as the “Fortuny
Dome” and the system for the lighting of scenes with indirect and
reﬂected light that are the most striking. This thick and bulky album gathers
together an undeﬁned but very consistent number of drawings, which are attached
directly onto pieces of cloth. Given the poor preservative condition of the
album, upon the completion of the restoration the individual insertion of each
drawing into a double page with the inventory number on the outside is
foreseen.

The
restorer. Margherita Errera will be restoring the Fortuny Theatre Drawings
Album. She was also responsible for
restoring Palladio’s drawings from the collection of the Musei Civici di Vicenza.

Daniela
Giussani, Giulia Venturini and Marialiusa Frisa

Fashionista,
Cecilia Matteucci

The
Fortuny Dinner. A dinner party for the Fortuny Mission Project was held after
the cocktail party in a palazzo on the Gran Canal.

Adele Re Rebaudengo, Manfredi Bellati and Franca Coin

Cesare de Michelis, Emanuela Bassetti and Tonci Foscari

Journalist Manuela Pivato who wrote one of twenty
short stories in the book I Nuovi Veneziani (The new Venetians) curated by
Caterina Falomo and published by Studio LT2.

Not on the menu. Hand blown Murano fruits sit in mid nineteenth century ceramic bowls.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Los Angeles: The Museum of
Contemporary Art – MOCA.The Museum of Contemporary Art, (MOCA), celebrated its 32-year history as one of the world’s leading
contemporary art institutions with An
Artist’s Life Manifesto, a special gala envisioned by renowned
performance artist Marina Abramović who
served as this year’s gala artistic director. Music and popular culture icon Deborah Harry, also known as Blondie performed
hit songs.

Note: I never write about
events I haven’t been to, this is an exception because of my love for art, food,
table settings and my admiration for Marina Abramovic, also the singularity of
this event intrigued me.

Photo Credit - Getty Images for MOCA

MOCA Gala Dinner.An Artist’s Life Manifesto, hosted
by Gala Chairs Maria Arena Bell andEli Broad, Honorary Gala ChairsLarry Gagosian and Dasha Zhukova, together with MOCA
Director Jeffrey Deitch, began
with cocktails, what Abramović calledPost-Human
Cocktails, and included a private preview of the exhibition Naked Hollywood: Weegee in Los Angeles, which
opened to the public on November 13. Curated by art historian Richard Meyer,
the exhibition is the first museum survey devoted to the body of work that the
tabloid photographer known as Weegee produced in Southern California. Guests
also previewed the Kenneth Anger:
Icons exhibition, which showcases the films, books, and artwork of one
of the most original filmmakers of American cinema. After previewing the
exhibitions, guests preceded to the gala tent, where they were fitted with
crisp, white lab coats before entering the main event.

MOCA Gala Dinner.“Marina Abramović choreographed
an extraordinary art performance in which all of our guests were participants,”
commented MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch “It fused an art experience with a
social experience.” An Artist’s Life
Manifesto continued in the main tent, decorated in black box fashion
with mirrors and dark walls, some guests sat down to a reenactment of
Abramović’s Nude with Skeleton (2002,
2005, 2010) work in which female performers were situated under skeletons on
rotating platforms at the center of round dinner tables.

Photo Credit - Getty Images for MOCA

MOCA Gala Dinner.At other tables performers were stationed under black-cloaked dinner
tables as live centerpieces, their heads popping out from holes cut into the
tables and slowly rotating around. The centerpieces engaged in non-verbal
exchanges with guests who chose to interact with them, meeting the gazes of the
diners as they ate and drank.

Photo Credit - Getty Images for MOCA

MOCA Gala Dinner.At everyone’s place setting cards instructed guests to “look, but do not
touch,” and invited them to silently communicate with the performers: “The
centerpiece will observe you. You may observe the centerpiece...please respect
the rules.”

MOCA Gala Dinner. While guests dined, the pallbearers
returned to the stage carrying a cloaked Deborah Harry, who emerged in white
lab coat, which she promptly stripped off to reveal a tight blood-red cocktail
dress. Harry treated guests to a rousing performance of “China Shoes,” “Heart
of Glass,” “One Way or Another,” “What I Heard,” and “Mother,” bringing the
crowd to its feet. Guests danced around the stage, relishing an intimate,
once-in-a-lifetime experience with the pop icon and legend.